Car crash
by Redemption Moon
Summary: Schuldich gets into a car crash with the most unlikely of people involved. Updated. 2nd and last chapter.
1. Chapter 1

Written in school computer terminal after unintentionally cutting a class.

Very random. As always, please review.

Redemption.

† † †

It was just an accident. Things like this happen everyday, although it had never happened to him before.

He supposed it could have been worse, Both of them could be dead.

He stared at the remnants of his car, thoroughly crumpled against the wall of rock and marveled for just a moment how he managed to survive without a scratch.

The other guy wasn't so lucky.

They both had been speeding. Schuldich had come from a bar in town and had downed more brandy than he had intended. He knew he shouldn't have driven back to his flat but stubborn by nature, he didn't mind risking it.

It was a little dark out, some of the streetlights had been broken by gangs and hormone-enraged kids and those that did work cast but a dim glimmer onto the gloomy highway.

He had felt the other man's thoughts just a split second before he even saw him.

He felt the shards of agony and confusion as well as the sharp pangs of sorrowful regret. He heard a name spoken from the depths of the subconscious and he knew that the person to whom it belonged died not long before.

The sharp turn in the road seemed to stretch into eternity, but he knew it was just a moment. Suddenly he saw the headlights of the motorcycle and swerved, pulling the wheel as hard as he could to the right.

The motorcycle swerved and skidded, jumping sparks flashed on the pavement as the screech of protesting metal hurled itself into the cold air.

It was a little too late, the wheels already ate up the front of the motorcycle just as that last moment send his vehicle careening against the merciless wall.

He heard the crash almost as much as he felt it. The jolt was unbelievable, as if a force was pulling him apart from his seat. A lucid thought told him that his seatbelt had just saved his life, and then the sharp inhale of air hissed as the airbag inflated and rammed itself into his face.

He just sat there, unable to move, his mind still careening from the impact of the blow. He knew his car was well beyond salvation, and his muscles were screaming bloody death but he knew that the guy on the motorcycle was hell worse off.

The guy might actually be dead. He hadn't heard a single word from him since the moment of the crash.

The human in Schuldich wished that the guy wasn't dead. Maybe he was only unconscious, he hoped.

It seemed like a lifetime until he heard the wailing of the sirens in the distance.

Extracting him from the wreck took almost an hour, but they lifted the whole car first to disengage the battered body underneath.

The biker was a mess. He could see the mangled body through the shards and pieces of his broken windshield.

Legs hung limply in thick jeans, masses of blood coloring and staining the tattered material and Schuldich knew that the bones there had been crushed.

He felt sadness, remorse. He didn't mind killing if he meant to do it. He usually had some motivation or another for his kills... but this was so... out of the blue. The man had done nothing against him or his employer and yet here he was, half dead because Schuldich had stubbornly decided to drive home drunk.

Through the cracked helmet and the broken visor, he saw a youthful face smattered cruelly with blood.

Guilt made his stomach float.

Miraculously, he wasn't as damaged as he felt. He was more lucid now, more sober than he had ever been and the pain was unbelievable but the doctors said that he just had a minor concussion from a hairline fracture and he needed to stay a few more hours for the tests.

The other man was in the ICU, he was told, just out of surgery.

He owed it to him to show up. The man would probably hate him for life- but hell, he was used to that. Factions might even have formed to make sure he and his teammates would go down.

He was used to that.

The nurses didn't want to let him through, but he said that he was the owner of the car in the accident. And a little telepathic suggestion didn't hurt either.

They gave him sympathetic glances while he heard spiteful thoughts in their heads about how he killed the boy. How the boy had been too young. How he had been drunk.

He really couldn't blame them. All of it was true and he knew it. Otherwise, he wouldn't be swimming the endless pit of guilt, now would he?

He took a step forward and brushed past the two nurses, leaving them to think their nasty-sympathetic thoughts to themselves.

He supposed he already expected what he was going to see. He had seen enough of blood and gore in his life to make it an everyday, mundane thing. It was stupid, really, how he couldn't gather the courage to face his unwitting victim.

Then again, he had done many stupid things in his life.

He stepped forward and saw the body on the white bed. Millions of machines seemed to beep and whir their witness of the young man's struggle for survival.

He heard the rhythmic woosh as air rushed in and out of semi-collapsed lungs.

He expected what to see but he didn't expect _who_ to see.

He didn't expect to see _him_ there.

He didn't expect this could ever happen to _him_ outside of a mission.

But there he was, the boy that the Schwarz knew as Siberian, broken.

He really should be glad, he thought to himself. They had been trying to kill those WeiB people anyway and now one was out of their hair, perhaps for good.

But it didn't stop the guilt that had been washing over him since the start of the ordeal.

He could hear thoughts stumbling into the surface of lucidity.

Ken Hidaka was awakening.

The eyes fluttered open, surrounded by hues of different colors. The man was barely alive, anchored only by machines that kept him breathing.

He saw no recognition in the watery orbs, only confusion and physical pain dulled by countless drugs.

He neared the bed, tentatively, almost shyly, trying to rein the self-reproach that threatened to make him run.

He never expected to encounter with Siberian this way. Not in a million years.

But here he was, standing over his bed, offering an arm.

He didn't know why, but he saw Ken try his damnedest to move his limbs.

Under the thin white blanket, there was nothing.

And then he knew, they had amputated both his legs.

Ken knew it too.

And a sharp wail tore through the room, reverberating through every nook and niche. It was a wail far worse than the dying throes of any creature.

It was the sort of grief that knew no comfort. It was the sort of grief who recognized no man or woman, no friend or enemy, no love or hate. It was the sort of grief that threatened to blow one's heart apart until nothing was left but nerves and shattered pieces of one's soul

Schuldich had never known such grief.

And it engulfed him, encompassing him in a wall of sea-salt agony. He could feel the terror, the absolute horror, the maddening anguish.

All he could do was grit his teeth and endure the clawed fingers that dug into his skin, he had caused this immeasurable pain.

He was the cause.

Fate really knew how to play twisted games.


	2. Aftermath of the crash

**RedemptionMoon: **Wow, I haven't posted in ages! I have a lot of time in my hands now especially since it's spring break! So I'm posting this second and last chapter to Car Crash. It's a little... abstract... and possibly depressing so I'm rather sure you guys wont like it as much as you liked the first chapter... but it's also a conclusion.

Car Crash was meant to be a stand-alone fic but many people demanded to know what happened next; so I guess I decided to put a definitive end to all things that happened.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed the first 'installation.' I hope you will be satisfied with this. :) As always, please leave a review; you don't know how much reviews delight me. (might even inspire me enough to write installations to my other fics or write other depressing one-shots LOL)

† † †

† **Aftermath of the Crash † **

Every day was a struggle now.

Every moment was a thousand years meshed into tiny fragments people referred to as 'seconds.'

It was his fault. He had been the cause and he deserved the consequences.

He was damned - not by God nor by others... but by himself.

He was 'guilty' after all.

He damned himself for being who he was and for doing what he did... this was the reason why he endlessly punished himself.

He punished himself by looking at his victim in the eye every single day and feeling _his_ pain and _his_ hatred and _his_ fear and _his_ loathing.

Every day, he would go the hospital and sit by the bed; watching Ken Hidaka, the previous 4th member of WieB Kruez, wish him death with all hatred _he_ could possibly muster until all _his_ strength would give way to a dreamless slumber.

Every single day he wanted to die under that gaze. He wanted to shrivel up like dry leaves and disintegrate into the cold breeze... then again, that would just poison the air. He did not deserve such a dignified death. He did not want to poison the earth with his ashes. He deserved to burn in hellfire where the flames were so hot, no ashes could remain.

In a way, it was a sort of poetic justice. The person whom he had caused so much pain was now causing him an equal amount of agony.

Oh no, Ken never said a word. _He'd_ just stare at him with those flaming eyes. In Ken's eyes, Schuldich found his hellfire.

But then it didn't help that Schuldich was telepathic; he heard every death wish, every curse, every muffled cry for murder.

He accepted it because he knew it was his fault.

So everyday, he would come to the hospital and feel the animosity from his unwitting and unintended victim; and he would curse himself and he would wish every other moment that he had not gone out that night and drowned himself in liquor.

† † †

Then one day... Ken just... stopped.

Gone were the anger, the hate and the intense loathing... it was just pain... and fear that existed.

And Schuldich found that this tortured him more than the hate could ever do.

Deeper and deeper, Ken sank into the recesses of _his_ soul, immersing _himself_ into the dark bowels of _his_ mind until sunlight no longer existed and only _his_ screaming agony echoed and shattered the silence.

The hellfire no longer existed in _his_ eyes. _His_ eyes were now twin abysses threatening to swallow the light they looked upon. There was an endless depth of nothing but misery... Ken had allowed _his_ spirit to wander into the forest of nothingness, perhaps never to return again.

_His_ body was alive, but there was no one there...

And all Schuldich could ever hear in the younger boy's mind was the sound of agony; the wailing of a tortured soul fleeing into destruction.

He could no longer help it... he could no longer restrain the guilt that threatened to engulf his very own life and his own soul.

For the first time and years... in the decades of his existence... he allowed the tendrils of his thoughts to take him, his soul into the mind of his victim; a victim he had caused much pain.

He was wrong. It had not been a forest after all.

A dark, gloomy plain stretched into forever in all directions... and Schuldich walked it all. He walked and walked, trying to find the source of the anguished keening... the miserable weeping.

Ken's mind was as dark as an endless night.

An eternity passed, he found himself standing at the edge of forever, looking down at an unfathomable cliff. There seemed to be nothing there; but it was where the pain came from.

He felt fear.

He felt reprehension.

He did not want to jump but guilt dictated that he must do so...

So he found himself falling and falling.

Another eternity passed. It seemed like time passed in forevers in Ken's mind. Was it always like this in such lost causes?

Finally he landed. He landed with such a powerful jolt that he was sure he felt the physical pain. He was bleeding all over. Pain reverberated from the inside to the outside and it was as if he couldn't think clearly...

He turned, and saw a pair of dark eyes looking at him. Not really saw; it was too dark to see anything but himself and the blood; but in his mind's eye, he saw the twin abysses staring out at him.

He walked, dragged his battered bloody body forward to those abysses and he found a forlorn creature trapped in a cage of jagged rocks. Even in _his_ own mind... Ken had no limbs. _He_ was useless... even in this bleak made-up world.

It was then that Schuldich knew what he should do.

But fear tore him apart in all directions... was he willing...?

No... Schuldich was human too, and humanness also meant that he had a conscience... right now, his conscience was swallowing him whole.

Eternities, eternities, forevers of indecision...

The world in Ken's mind existed in eternities.

Slowly he neared; fearing the very same being he was approaching. He could feel Ken's sad, empty eyes just looking at him.

They were standing face to face now. Almost nose to nose.

" I'm so sorry." His mouth had opened but no words had come out. An invisible wind carried them away and spread their ashes into the darkness.

There was an unfathomable silence... and then...

Suddenly, tears fell from Ken's sightless eyes. So much salty tears like rain from the dark clouds above them that they could not see.

He could feel the warm drops spattering on his skin, his hair, his eyelashes.

Ken was crying. For the first time, _he_ was crying for himself; for what _he_ had lost and who _he_ had left behind. All the pain and the regret came pouring out, wrapping Schuldich with their tiny dark strand until he felt like he was enclosed in a black cocoon.

He heard Ken's voice above the howling wind. "I'm... so... scared. I don't... want... to be alone..."

He found himself wrapping his bloody arms around Ken. The man who had become as black as a shadow... the boy who was as lost as a frail child.

He couldn't hear his own voice, but still he said. "Don't worry. I'm here." He now knew how it felt to embrace a shadow.

"No... please... take me away."

He knew what he had to do.

At the bottom of an abyss, there is nowhere to go.

They simply had to disappear.

It was hard; it took all his strength to be able to do what he had to do... it was also difficult because he, some part of himself, still wanted to leave... and live.

But this was his payment.

Dying would be his redemption.

So he snuffed out that little voice in his heart crying out that he wanted to leave, and he started to disappear... with Ken.

He had allowed himself to be engulfed in the darkness until there was nothing left. No pain, no fear, no regrets.

Their existences were being erased by a merciful God... one that mercifully allowed death.

Nothing remained but their eyes, staring at each other. His were green, and _his_ were black in shadow.

Both pairs unblinking yet speaking volumes for entwined souls. One asking forgiveness, the other giving forgiveness.

And then, their eyes were extinguished as well... like candle lights never existing in the dark night.

Nothing existed anymore.

Not even the abyss.

† † †

"He's gone Crawford." Nagi turned from the bed, trying to blink out the gory sight.

Schuldich had suddenly started spurting blood a moment ago for no reason at all. It was as if every pore had tried to expel his lifeblood from his body.

He had been declared brain dead years ago... several years ago when he had almost accidentally killed Ken Hidaka.

According the nurse on shift at that time, one moment he was just sitting beside Ken, staring at his seemingly-empty body, then he too was slumped on the bed, unconscious... and never to wake up again.

Schwarz confined him in the same room as Siberian. They knew Schuldich's 'disappearance' had something to do with his victim... and they hoped against hope that Schuldich would come back from whatever ordeal he was facing in their virtual world.

They knew he had to deal with things in his own way... it was why they allowed his body to be hooked up to artificial life; to machines and contraptions that kept his body breathing and beating. Side by side, they lay, a sight to see.

Ken Hidaka, his legs no longer there; and Schuldich physically complete and yet also completely gone.

Years they waited.

They waited for his return.

To no avail.

In the ten years he had been confined there had been no word no whisper no indication of life

Schuldich was gone

Finally he was gone in body as well as mind...

...and the strangest thing was he had taken Ken with him

Eternity ended after all.


End file.
